I.J. Information Engineering and Electronic Business, 2013, 1, 33-39 Published Online May 2013 in MECS (http://www.mecs-press.org/) Copyright © 2013 MECS I.J. Information Engineering and Electronic Business, 2013, 1, 33-39 Data Center Strategy to Increase Medical Information Sharing in Hospital Information Systems Karim Zarour, Nacereddine Zarour LIRE Laboratory, Department of Software Technologies and Information Systems University Constantine2, Constantine, Algeria, karim.zarour@umc.edu.dz, nasr-zarour@umc.edu.dz Abstract — The sharing of medical information among healthcare providers is a key factor in improving any health care system. By providing opportunities for sharing and exchanging information and knowledge, data center, agent and ontology play a very important role in the field of medical informatics. In this paper, we propose a design of architecture and data center for the development of a Hospital information system (HIS) based on agents and ontology. Index Terms — Hospital information system, Data center, Agent, Profile ontology I． INTRODUCTION The field of medical informatics is one of the largest areas of research currently being undertaken mainly in Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems (IS). Health networks in general, are supported by IS. These IS are structured particularly around medical record to support the storage, access, dissemination and sharing of patient information [1] . To be more effective and to make the right decisions at the right time, Hospital information systems (HIS) need to have high quality of information: relevant, reliable, accurate and actual. In addition, this information must be stored, updated and made available to the different actors involved in the care system whenever is necessary. For care providers, information is a strategic resource that is essential to be mastered because it contributes to the quality of decision. It is the role of HIS to disseminate information, regardless its nature, to relevant stakeholders. The HIS is a typical collaborative information system in which people such as physicians, nurses, professors, researchers, health insurance personnel, etc. share patient information (including text, images, and multimedia data). It makes data available for the following uses: patient care, administrative and business management, monitoring and evaluating medical care services, epidemiological and clinical research, and planning of medical care resources [2] . Important functionalities of HIS include: fast, easy and ubiquitous access to patient information. So, this access must be: (i) effective and as complete as possible (ii) ubiquitous independently of the geographical and/or equipment available to the healthcare professional [3],[4] . 1.1. Problems The increasing use of digital medical information leads the need for information storage capacities that must be accessible in real time. This requirement forces most hospitals to continually expand their databases. Unfortunately, most hospitals are not able to expand their databases because of poor planning as explained by Shawn [5] . According to Low et al., [6] in the coming information boom, data will be stored in large data centers around the world and will serve as access to hospital information records for doctors, pharmacies, insurers, patients, and institutions. Missing medical information may lead to late or wrong decisions. For Lejiang et al. [7] there are some problems in traditional medical data management: (i) the storage capacity and